Attack Of The Fabulists

The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what was left. They slipped in the Lie, as always. We aren't sure of anything concerning the Age of the League; how many of the documents are forged? You must remember, you see, wherein the Shing are our enemy. It's easy enough to live one's whole life without ever seeing one of them -- knowingly....There is no trust in them, because there is no truth in them....It was the Lie that defeated all the races of the League and left us subject to the Shing. Remember that, Falk. Never believe the truth of anything the Enemy has said."

[Ursula K. LeGuin, City of Illusions]

All the great tyrants have known the power of the Lie. Only when their lies have been penetrated have their peoples risen against them...if their people retained the power to do so.

We who love freedom are currently laboring to resist the incursions of a would-be tyrant and his henchmen. Our Enemies have found that, on certain subjects, such as the right to keep and bear arms, the American people are disinclined to go along with their notions. So they've been lying to us: about their intentions; about the probable consequences of allowing them their wish; and about what's happened to other nations that have gone their way.

The Silicon Graybeard provides us with an excellent example:

My son emailed me this link to an article in the NYT in answer to the "more guns, less crime" view I express all the time. The article is called "More Guns = More Killing" and I don't recommend you read it, unless you want to find the holes in it. In true NYT fashion, they assert a lot of things as true just because they say so, or under appeal to authority. For example,

After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. Before then, Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent, and there have been no mass killings, said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.(emphasis added by me)

But we in the community know that's not true. The Brookings Institution said,

...homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%."

Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up.

And, of course, in England the results have been considerably worse. Handgun crime has doubled, and the UK now has more violent crime than South Africa, the US and most of the EU.

Similarly appealing to authority, the NYT says,

Scientific studies have consistently found that places with more guns have more violent deaths, both homicides and suicides. Women and children are more likely to die if there’s a gun in the house. The more guns in an area, the higher the local suicide rates. "Generally, if you live in a civilized society, more guns mean more death," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. "There is no evidence that having more guns reduces crime. None at all." (emphasis added by me)

which pretty much conflicts with what we know about Switzerland, not to mention all of the excellent work done by John Lott and others here in the states.

The New York Times is the "house organ" of the American Left. It's provided many a service to the Obama Administration. That its writers should be inclined to lie in service to the Left's agenda should come as no surprise...except that far too many Americans still believe, despite everything that's transpired, that "the paper of record" would never dare to print a factual assertion that's untrue.

It is to laugh.

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Americans tend to be trusting because we tend to be trustworthy. As I've written on other occasions, in the absence of countervailing evidence we tend to attribute the moral-ethical code and overall mental map we work from to those around us.

This is not good policy when assessing the statements of a power-monger.

What is there to say but "Beware!" -- ? The Obamunists are frightened by the growing possibility of open revolt. The many reports of massive vote fraud from the November elections, the farcical posturing about the Benghazi atrocity, the absurd Cabinet nominations, the Administration's refusal to enforce the immigration laws as written, the substantial year's-end decrease in Americans' take-home pay, demands by some Democrats for the curtailment of freedom of expression, and the open attack by the Democrats on the right to keep and bear arms have left many of us wondering whether the hour has come.

The Administration and its Congressional allies are aware of this, of course. They know that to make further incursions on Americans' freedom, they must defuse the burgeoning hostility before it metamorphoses into open resistance. But given their agenda, there's only one way to do that: they must lie to us, and convincingly, about virtually everything they've done and plan to do.

The Mainstream Media, being handmaidens to the Democrats and utterly in love with Barack Hussein Obama, will collaborate in that undertaking. Indeed, they'll function as the spearhead of the attack. They are America's "Shing."

"Put not your trust in princes," said Jesus of Nazareth. I'd go with that on general principles. Not only do we have ample evidence that "princes" have no great regard for the truth; the Son of God is a far more reliable Authority than the New York Times.